
WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 



BY 

LUCY M. SALMON 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 



BY 

LUCY M. SALMON 



POUGHKEEPSIE, NEW YORK 
1917 



-^\b 



fo^ 



Copyright, 1917, 

by 
Lucy M. Salmon 






WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 



Students of history must to-day find encourage- 
ment in the generous hospitality everywhere ac- 
corded the study of this subject. Once regarded 
as one of the accomplishments to be pursued in 
fashionable boarding schools and practically ig- 
nored elsewhere in the educational system, it has 
now won for itself an assured place and a large 
and influential clientele. Legislatures are pre- 
scribing the study of history in the public schools, 
colleges are requiring it for admission to their 
courses, newspapers are advocating its study, 
while ignorance of history is the unpardonable sin 
in the eyes of the occasional correspondent who 
writes for the daily press. 

But all is not peace within the walls of Jerusa- 
lem. The controversy that was once waged over 
the desirability of the study of history has now 
shifted to a consideration of what special field of 
history should be studied and in this discussion the 
advocates of the study of modern history are in- 
sistent in pressing their claims. Of what use, they 
exclaim, is a knowledge of the Peloponnesian War 
to a person who can not bound Bulgaria ; what does 
it avail a man to know correctly the different 
events in the three Punic Wars if he can not name 
accurately the generals in the Great War; why 
should any one profess to understand the relations 
of Julius Caesar and the Remi if he can not locate 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

the rivers of Rumania; why should any teacher 
of history not feel qualms of conscience if his stu- 
dents have an acquaintance with Cincinnatus but 
have never heard the name of Cavour. Why, in- 
deed, should any one study yesterday when he is 
ignorant of to-day, and if he has knowledge of to- 
day what matters it if he is ignorant of the day- 
bef ore-yesterday ? 

Many arguments can be advanced in favor of 
this position, and the first is its very antiquity. It 
was Juvenal who nearly two thousand years ago 
admonished parents to '' impose severe exactions 
on him that is to teach your boys ; that he be per- 
fect in the rules of grammar for each word ; read 
all histories ; know all authors as well as his own 
finger-ends ; that if questioned at hazard, while on 
his way to the Thermae or the baths of Phoebus, 
he should be able to tell the name of Anchises' 
nurse, and the name and native land of the step- 
mother of Anchemolus; tell off-hand how many 
years Acestes lived, how many flagons of wine the 
Sicilian king gave to the Phrygians. " ^ It was Isi- 
dore of Seville, as cited by Carlton Huntley Hayes,^ 
who in the seventh century found that ''History is 
the story of what has been done, and by its means 
what has taken place in the past is perceived. It 
is called in the Greek historia, that is, from seeing 
(videre) and learning {cognoscere). For among 
the ancients, no one wrote history unless he had 
been present and witnessed what was to be de- 
scribed. For we understand what we see better 



1 Juvenal, Satire VII. 

^ "Propriety and Value of the Study of Recent History." His- 
tory Teacher's Magazine, November, 1913. 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

than we do what we gather by hearsay. For what 
is seen is told without lying. This study belongs 
to grammar because whatever is worth remember- 
ing is entrusted to letters." It was Ordericus 
Vitalis who in the eleventh century professed to 
write of events that had passed under his own ob- 
servation, yet began his history with an account of 
the advent of Christ and gave a fourth of his his- 
tory to events before his owai era.^ 

Montaigne, writing in the sixteenth century Of 
Books, warned his readers that ''The only good 
histories are those that have been written by the 
persons themselves who commanded in the affairs 
whereof they write, or who have participated in 
the conduct of them, or, at least, who have had the 
conduct of others of the same nature. Such are 
almost all the Greek and Roman historians; for 
several eye-witnesses having writ of the same sub- 
ject (as happened in those times, when grandeur 
and learning frequently met in the same person), 
if there was an error it must of necessity be a very 
slight one, and upon a very doubtful accident. 
What can a man expect from a physician who will 
undertake to write of war ; or from a mere scholar 
treating upon the designs of princes?" ^ 

These are but suggestions showing that at least 
from the time of Juvenal there has always been a 
demand that teachers should be primed with the 
facts of history and that historians should write 
only of those matters of which they have been 

1 "My present object is to treat of what passes under our own 
observation, or we are called upon to endure." — Preface of 
Ordericus Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of England and 
Normanw 

2 Works, ed. by W. Hazlitt. II.. 94. 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

personally cognizant. These demands converge 
to-day, from somewhat opposite directions, on the 
position that the only history that is worth study- 
ing is modern history and the only history worth 
writing is what the historian writes of his times. 

This opinion can not be lightly dismissed, even 
though the basic question may seem superficially 
to belong in the class termed ''purely academic," 
and to suggest the time-honored query, "Which is 
mightier, the pen or the sword?" The study of 
modern history is constantly urged to the exclu- 
sion of the study of every other period and its 
supporters count as reactionaries all who differ 
from them. 

Yet before this position can be unreservedly ac- 
cepted and modern history be recognized as enti- 
tled to the place in the curriculum hitherto held 
by ancient history, it is necessary to understand 
what is meant by modern history, what is the basis 
for the general division of the field into ancient, 
mediaeval, and modern history, what constitutes 
value in facts, what therefore leads to the separa- 
tion of facts into the classes of important and un- 
important, and finally what is a fact. 

Modern history has usually been dated from the 
end of the fifteenth century, — the beginning of a 
period marked by great inventions and discoveries 
and by important political changes. Yet a recent 
important history' pushes forward its beginning 
by two hundred years, others fix its farthermost 
boundaries at the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, and to still others it is the term of the past 

1 Robinson and Beard. The Development of Modern Europe, 
2 vols., 1907. 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 



twenty-five or at most fifty years that includes all 
that is worth knowing in history. 

In a similar way the boundaries of ancient his- 
tory have been movable. At one end the anthopol- 
ogist and the archaeologist have pushed back the 
confines of history half a million of years/ At the 
other end the possibility of a more precise chronol- 
ogy has dated the close of ancient history with cer- 
tain definite events, as the death of Julius Caesar, 
the abdication of Diocletian, the accession of Con- 
stantine, the death of Theodosius, the proclama- 
tion of Odoacer, or the coronation of Charlemagne. 
The period assigned to ancient history has there- 
fore been increased enormously, the field of mod- 
ern history has by the opposite process been sub- 
stantially curtailed, while by the simple device of 
ignoring the intervening period and eliminating 
what was once known as mediaeval history or tele- 
scoping it with modern history, the question at 
issue between the adherents of ancient history and 
of modern history as to the comparative value of 
the two fields becomes fairly clear. The question 
then reverts first to the nature of the historian's 
surveying tape that measures time. 

Is chronology so fixed and definite that it can be 
generally accepted as a satisfactory method of 
marking time ! It is a time-honored proverb that 
chronology and geography are the two eyes of his- 
tory, and chronology would seem therefore a sim- 
ple matter. . Yet the usually accepted chronology 



1 The antiquity of the Piltdown man of Sussex, England, has 
been estimated at 100,000 to 300,000 years, while that of the 
Trinil race has been held to be 500,000 years. — H. F. Osborn, 
Men of the Old Stone Age, pp. 145, 40. 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

is a purely arbitrary division of time and has its 
own fashions like schools of architecture or paint- 
ing. Time itself may not vary, but the initial point 
of departure in marking its flight may be based on 
the supposed date of creation, on the birth of an 
individual, from the founding of a city, or the 
change of residence of a great leader. It is evi- 
dent that there has been wide divergence of opin- 
ion as to what should be the point of departure in 
establishing a system of chronology, that no uni- 
formity has as yet been attained, that the measure- 
ments of time now in use conform to the political 
or religious ideas of individual races or nations, 
and that any of the present systems must be inade- 
quate in affording a definite, permanent, univer- 
sally accepted basis for dividing the past into im- 
movable periods. 

It must be equally evident that even in regard to 
the abstract conception of time itself equal diver- 
sity exists. Sun time, true time, Greenwich time, 
Washington time, Western Union time, standard 
time all indicate the wide range of calculation used 
by different computers even in a single country 
like our own. When by the perfection of astro- 
nomical processes absolute time is ascertained, we 
feel free to disregard it when occasion demands, — 
politicians set back the clock on the fourth of 
March, and daylight is saved by legislative enact- 
ment. 

Variations in usage and in measurements may 
be found in the same organization. In ecclesiasti- 
cal systems, the advent of Christ is observed on a 
fixed date, while his death and resurrection are 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

commemorated on movable dates. The true birth- 
day of the English monarch has not always been 
observed, but a convenient arbitrary date has been 
selected and honored. 

Moreover, when these absolute standards of 
measurement are supplied, they are often found 
inadequate to the demands made. When does 
night end and the day begin, when does the child 
become a man, and man become old, when was 
the new world discovered, when did the Reforma- 
tion begin, when were any great political, relig- 
ious, industrial or social doctrines first promul- 
gated! Even a cursory examination of the meth- 
ods anywhere used in marking time and fixing a 
definite point of departure for new movements or 
even for specific events must make it evident that 
precise measurements of time indicating the frac- 
tions of a second can be used only in the mechanical 
competitions of sport or the competitive processes 
of industry, — they fail to mark the rate of or- 
ganic growth. 

Any effort therefore to determine what is 
ancient history and what is modern history, if 
based on chronology alone, must be fruitless since 
the measurements of time are themselves so arbi- 
trary in their nature and so variable in their ap- 
plication. 

It may be said that the establishment of a pre- 
cise chronology is not essential for the deter- 
mination of the field of modern history since this 
necessarily means the study of the world about 
us. Yet this assumption contravenes the very na- 
ture of historv. Historv to be history must be the 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

study of developments, and a cross-cut section is 
not history in any field of knowledge. Nor can it 
be assumed that all that is recent is in and of it- 
self important. Nothing is in itself so absolutely 
ancient as is the fashion of last year, whether it 
be of food or of clothing, of art or of literature, 
of politics or of religious creeds. A theological 
library, a law library, or a medical library becomes 
obsolete in the lifetime of the individual who has 
collected it even at large expenditure of time and 
money. 

In and of themselves the fashions of the hour 
have no value, — they acquire importance only as 
they are brought into relationship with similar 
conditions of the past. The most minute knowl- 
edge of the present can have no value until it also 
is brought into relationship with the past. 

Nothing again seems so obsolete as do the dis- 
coveries of yesterday, — they have been superseded 
by those of to-day as interest in these is already 
waning before the hope of discoveries to be made 
to-morrow. Yet to-morrow will be possible only 
because yesterday has been, — the investigator who 
hopes that his observations will yield the clue to 
the cause of a disease that has as yet baffled bac- 
teriologists ; the chemist who believes that his ex- 
periments will show how the waste material of a 
manufacturing process may become a valuable by- 
product ; the physicist who is confident that he will 
soon be able to show how latent energy may be 
made generative; — each and all knows that what 
he hopes to accomplish in the future will be made 
possible only through what has already been done 

10 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

in the past. Perpetual motion has not yet been 
discovered nor has iron been transmuted into 
gold, in part because the initial step in these direc- 
tions has not yet been taken. The scientist may 
well say with John Bright, "We are true ancients ; 
we stand on the shoulders of our forefathers, and 
can see further. ' ' 

Nor is it science alone that rises on the should- 
ers of its forefathers. In literature the "best sel- 
ler" of last year is already discarded and "the 
great American novel ' ' is yet in the future ; many 
of the great novels of the nineteenth century are 
to-day forgotten, and most of those of the eigh- 
teenth century retain only a so-called academic 
interest. Yet yesterday's discarded novel makes 
possible the novel of to-morrow, the principles of 
literary construction have been deduced from a 
study of the past, and the individual concrete novel 
is merged into the general abstract novel. If 
nothing seems so absolutely important as does 
to-day's discovery in science, or the book fresh 
from the press, it is not always because of their in- 
trinsic merit but because the science and the liter- 
ature of the day make for the present a connection 
with the basic past, and become in their turn step- 
ping-stones for the science and the literature of 
the morrow. Without this connection they are like 
the seed that falls on stony ground and withers 
away because it has no depth of earth. 

Much therefore in every field of knowledge, if 
tested by this principle, proves to be ephemeral 
and without permanent importance. 

But it is evident on the other hand that much is 
found on every side that has come down from a re- 

11 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

mote antiquity and still lives in the nndiminshed 
vigor of youth. 

In literature there is everywhere the persistence 
not only of primitive types but of the definite indi- 
viduals who come down from early time. The most 
modern of novels makes constant reference to **the 
elemental man ' ' and ' * elemental traits, ' ' — the hero 
acts as the primitive man would supposedly act 
and the heroine is " a cave woman. ' ' The novelist 
looks less forward than back, — "They married and 
lived happy ever afterward" is no longer the con- 
ventional ending of a novel. The novelist rather 
plants his feet firmly on the past and makes con- 
nection for his characters with the infinite past, 
not with the finite future of the single life. Pygma- 
lion, and the Christian martyrs are as much of 
to-day as they were of the day two thousand years 
ago. Long ago it was discovered that but thirty- 
six plots can be used in the construction of the 
drama or in the novel, — a re-combination, or a new 
arrangement is alone possible. Greek and Latin 
dramas are represented on every college stage 
from Berlin westward to the Pacific, folk dances 
are the recreation of children on every playground 
in America, folk songs are everywhere collected 
and preserved and show the vitality of all that is 
fundamental in human life. Remove from the 
language of the day that, with its slang, its new 
scientific and industrial terminology, seems so 
"up-to-the-minute," every trace of the past, every 
work of Greek or Latin, Hebrew or Arabic origin, 
and it would be difficult for men to communicate 
with their fellowmen except by sign. The rebus 
signs found in endless variety on every main street 

12 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

in every town in the country are forcible remind- 
ers of the illiteracy once universal, as the symbols 
on election ballots to-day are reminders that illit- 
eracy is still with us. The flying scroll of the medi- 
aeval monumental brass reappears in the flying 
scroll that the cartoonist puts into the mouth of the 
politician of the day. Art as a mode of expression, 
all the media with which art works, take us back 
as far as man's history can be traced. 

Recurring art forms, as the column and the arch, 
connect the present with a remote past. Building 
materials,~wood, brick, stone, cement,^ adobe,~are 
reminders of the age as well as of the modernness 
of the materials of construction and of the fact that 
the list has not been lengthened for thousands of 
years. Recurring art symbols persist, — the shield 
of Minerva with the portrait of Phidias, the sketch 
of Charlemagne holding in his hand the model of 
the cathedral of Aachen, the portraits of donors 
and their families on early modern religious paint- 
ings, the Reynolds portrait of Lord Heatherfield 
with the key of the fortress of Gibraltar in his 
hand, the illustration of the workman holding a 
model of the Pennsylvania Railroad station used 
to announce the opening of the station in 1910, all 
these indicate the time-old and all but universal 
desire to associate the maker with the thing made. 

The discoveries of archaeologists in the Troad, 
at Mycenae and Tiryns, and at Knossos have had 
an appreciable influence on the work of goldsmiths 
and silversmiths, they have fostered an interest in 



1 Advertisements in the daily newspapers of the Cement Show 
in New York in 1910, were illustrated by representations of 
Roman monuments built with concrete 2,00() years ago. 

13 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

pottery, and they have made possible a new and 
presumably more correct interpretation of myths, 
legends and traditions, of classical and mediaeval 
literatures, and they should at least give rise to 
humility in the mind of the twentieth century man 
who contemplates the remains of architecture 
erected two thousand years before Christ. Other 
discoveries may show the persistence of more sor- 
did phases of life, — E. C. Jebb intimates that in the 
fourth century the Ilians did a profitable trade in 
attracting tourists by their pseudo-Trojan memo- 
rials,^ while Professor Dana Carleton Munro has 
recently been writing on The High Cost of Living 
in the Middle Ages. 

Art as a means of expression shows in its turn 
how our indoor amusements and out-of-doors 
sports have continued from an early date, — run- 
ning, rowing, racing, boxing, dancing ; ball playing 
in every form; games of warfare, of agriculture, 
of every occupation and of idleness ; sports of Cen- 
tral Italy from the time of Dante to the present 
year; string games from the most remote times 
and places to the child of to-day in any school- 
room ; wrestling from primitive times to the Gras- 
mere sports; — everywhere recreation and sports 
show continuity of time and universality of place. 

The continuity of political interests as well as 
of political forms and methods of procedure are 
everywhere in evidence. The celebration of the 
seven hundredth anniversary of the signing of 
Magna Charta was made the subject of editorials in 
no fewer than twenty-eight American newspapers, 

1 "Homeric and Hellenic Ilium," Journal of Hellenic Studies. 
II.. 7-43. 

14 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

each citing a different paragraph as having a di- 
rect bearing on the problems of the day.^ The 
millenium of King Alfred, the four hundredth an- 
niversary of the birth of Luther and of Calvin, 
the tercentenary of Shakespeare and of Cervantes, 
have awakened widespread interest throughout 
every nation associated by religious, political, lit- 
erary, or physical inheritance with the event or 
person commemorated. 

The civic oath of the young men of Athens finds 
its place to-day at the head of the editorial column 
of a great metropolitan daily, it is repeated by the 
members of the graduating class of a great civic 
university, and undergoing a sea change it has be- 
come the academic oath of other educational in- 
stitutions. 

Continuity of legal procedure is found among 
us in the continuation of English methods on the 
one hand and on the other hand in the perpetua- 
tion in Louisiana of the Napoleonic code that in its 
turn has been derived from the Justinian code. 

The wealth of anthopological material that has 
been collected, collated, and interpreted by Sir J. 
G. Frazer shows how universal and how persistent 
have been the basic ideas of religion, of the rela- 
tion of man to nature, of social customs and cere- 
monies as they have every^vhere been found in 
corresponding stages of development. 

With all of our industrial, economic, and com- 
mercial progress, we find that much that survives 
is based on the sub-stratum of primitive economic. 



^ Boston Evening Transcript, cited by The Editorial, Tune 
24, 1915. 

15 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

industrial and commercial ideas. Industrial cus- 
toms of an early time have come down to us in the 
itinerant seamstress, dressmaker, scissors grind- 
er, umbrella mender, old rags collector, and vege- 
table peddler, while the fundamentals in all indus- 
trial processes are eternal. Fire, whether from 
flint or the sulphur match, light, whether from the 
pine knot or the electric current, force, whether 
from the human arm or the expansion of water, all 
take us back to the beginning of time. Bread from 
the fireless cooker is the direct descendant of bread 
baked in hot ashes. At the Passover Feast the 
Jewish mother spreads before her family kosher 
food prepared according to the Mosaic instruc- 
tions and traditional knowledge, with constant 
care in the use of utensils in order that the great 
crisis in a religious history may be fittingly set 
forth by her husband and son.^ The Indian women 
grinding grain outside their huts sing praises to 
the sun and rain. Everywhere the elemental pro- 
cesses in domestic and industrial life connect the 
present with a remote past, and thereby gain and 
retain interest. Even the instruments by which 
these processes are carried on acquire by associa- 
tion with them interest and beauty.^ 



1 Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House,- pp. 242-243. 

'■^ "In certain primitive and necessary things there lies an ir- 
resistible appeal. We perceive it in a windmill, a watermill, a 
threshing-floor, a wine-press, a cottage loom, a spindle, a baking 
oven, and even in a pitcher, a hearthstone, or a wheel. There we 
see the eternal necessities of mankind in their ancient, most 
natural form, and, whether by long association with the satis- 
faction of some need, or simply by their fitness for utility, they 
have acquired a peculiar quality of beauty." — Editorial in the 
London Nation, cited by Eliza Calvert Hall, A Book of Hand- 
Woven Coverlets, pp. 40-41. 

16 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 



Barter and pajTiient in kind have come down to 
us in donation parties and in other gifts of food 
and clothing made to clergymen, doctors, and the 
editors of country papers ; in the discounts given 
ministers by railroads and department stores ; in 
the free hospitality extended by clergymen to 
other clergymen; in the free medical attendance 
given by physicians to other physicians and their 
families; in the pajmient of the wages of house- 
hold employers partly in cash and partly in "liv- 
ing expenses, ' ' and similar payments made teach- 
ers in boarding schools, and in the payment of in- 
dustrial employees in orders on company stores. 

The pa\Tnent of obligations feudal in spirit con- 
tinues in the gifts to doctors made by grateful pa- 
tients, in the presents made by contractors to the 
wives of engineers, in the Christmas gifts made by 
corporations to employees, in the payment of mar- 
riage, christening and burial fees, in *'tips" for 
personal service, in the presents to chairmen of 
conmiittees, in the flowers given a prima donna and 
the flowers given public officials on the first day of 
the transaction of public business. An attempt to 
revive the political and social relationships that 
characterized the mediaeval feudal system was 
made in the seventeenth century in the Valley of 
the Hudson, in Maryland, and in the Carolinas, 
but the chain of continuity was broken and the 
effort failed. 

The Welsh living on the Welsh tract in Pennsyl- 
vania experienced as far back as the seventeenth 
century the difficulties growing out of the ques- 
tions of the unearned increment and of the moral- 



17 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

ity of increasing the valuation of land and conse- 
quently increasing the taxes when they had them- 
selves given the increased value through improve- 
ments they had made. 

The Hudson Bay Company in its development 
of the territory bearing its name had to meet and 
settle the question of strikes and to deal with the 
subject of the general relations of employer to 
employees. 

It is not alone the student of history who exam- 
ines the past in order to find a firm foundation for 
the present. The physician studies the physical 
and mental ancestry of his patients before pre- 
scribing for them, — the more obscure or compli- 
cated the disease the farther back he pushes his 
inquiry before completing his final diagnosis ; life 
insurance companies examine the physical ances- 
try as well as the personal physical conditions of 
applicants for insurance policies before accepting 
applications; social welfare workers more and 
more are finding it necessary to understand the 
social conditions under which the ancestors of the 
dependent members of society have lived, — the 
study of The Jukes made by R. L. Dugdale seemed 
for many years to have little influence, but it has 
come to be recognized as the very cornerstone of 
welfare work; investigators in eugenics are find- 
ing that those who have themselves been well born 
give the best guarantee that future races will be 
well born ; criminologists find in the study of an- 
cestry at least a partial explanation of criminal 
tendencies. These are but suggestions of the ser- 
ious efforts made by scientists to understand the 



18 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

ancestral conditions of those whose present condi- 
tions they seek to alleviate.^ 

In many fields honor and prestige come with in- 
creasing age. Every great educational institution 
that can trace its history through unbroken cen- 
turies thereby gains in honor and influence. Paris 
and Oxford, Bologna and Padua, Toulouse and 
Seville owe their educational prestige not alone to 
equipment and to faculties, but in a measure to 
their very age. The reverence given to more than 
one American university grows out of the rever- 
ence given age as well as respect for educational 
ideals. At least one great American university 
has sought to atone for its newness in the eyes of 
the public by opening its doors with a body of 
alumni and an emeritus professor adopted from a 
defunct institution. 

Social status in an aristocracy founded on birth 
gains in importance as known ancestry is pro- 
longed in the past, — the oldest peerage has by very 
virtue of its age a prestige not accorded those re- 
cently created. In an aristocracy founded on 
wealth, the **new rich" are always without the 
pale. Admission to so-called patriotic orders 
comes not through personal achievement but 
through ancestral merits. Other things being 
equal, all specimens of art and of ancient life gain 
immeasurably as they are able to show long an- 
tiquity. 



1 It must be understood that this scientific study of the past 
made by trained investigators is not to be classed with the super- 
ficial claims of those who demand immunity for physical and 
moral delinquency on the ground of "inheritance." 

19 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

Everywhere the effort is made, often uncon- 
sciously, to give vitality to the present by connect- 
ing it with the past. Do we yield to discourage- 
ment in efforts to improve the conditions of mod- 
ern life ? We are reminded by the press that two 
thousand years ago we were told that we should 
always have the poor with us, that jealousy caused 
the first recorded murder, that from the time of 
the Garden of -Eden mankind has tempted, has been 
tempted, and has yielded to temptation, that in- 
gratitude has always characterized men, that there 
have always been wars, that human nature has al- 
ways been what it is to day and that it will always 
remain as it now is. These statements may not 
be accepted at their face value, certainly not as 
regards the future, yet they are repeatedly made 
with the thought they will give comfort and en- 
couragement to those who despair of the present. 

These illustrations have been given to indicate 
that much that belongs to the present and that 
seems of overwhelming importance may quickly 
prove to be ephemeral. They also indicate that on 
every hand are found in undiminished vigor insti- 
tutions and customs that have come down to the 
present from a remote antiquity. Much more is 
therefore involved in the question of the nature of 
modern history than the chronological division 
into arbitrary periods, and it must follow in its 
turn that the relative importance of a period must 
be determined by other considerations than those 
of time alone. 

One of these determining factors that indicates 
the separation of ancient from modern times is the 



20 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

question as to how far the present makes connec- 
tion with the past and contains in itself the ele- 
ments of the universal. Whatever in art, litera- 
ture, science, or the deeds of men, represents but 
the fleeting fashion of the hour is destined to van- 
ish into thin air, but whatever has come down from 
an early period and still flourishes in the vigor of 
undimmed youth is a part of the universal heritage 
of the ages. 

It is correspondingly true that whatever is ar- 
tificial in its origin quickly loses its individuality 
and becomes a part of an undistinguishable whole. 
If the art of Thorwaldsen to-day seems artificial 
it is not because he chose his subjects from the 
mythology and history of Greece and Rome, but 
because he missed the appreciation of what made 
classical art vital, — his art became an imitation of 
the external forms of classical art rather than an 
outgrowth of his own Scandinavian soil. Had he 
turned to Scandinavian mythology and history and 
expressed its spirit in forms of art, he would have 
ranked among the greatest. It is fitting and char- 
acteristic that his works have been collected in a 
mausoleum of Egyptian design. If the great pre- 
raphaelites are already passing into obscurity, it 
is because they sought a revival of form and spirit 
not of their own time, — not that they chose as they 
did but that they did not chose other than they 
did, not that they depicted other times and other 
events, but that these times and events did not 
bear transplanting from their natural habitat to 
an artificial environment. 

Thus it must be seen that while fashion is fleet- 
ing, the spirit of the universal is permanent ; ideas 

21 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

transplanted from other soils may be set out on 
stony ground and wither away, but seed on good 
ground bears forth abundantly; the artificial is 
always ephemeral, but the natural is perpetual. 
Survival, continuity, and the universal alone deter- 
mine the importance of a period, — its importance 
is not gauged by the element of abstract time. 

A still further consideration must be noted. As 
every community, every family has its membership 
made up of different ages, and community age is 
altogether different from individual age, so mod- 
ern history begins at different times in different 
countries. The stone age is still found in more 
than one locality, and from the point of view of its 
own development and measured by chronology its 
history must be denoted as modern. Yet elsewhere 
the stone age, measured by its development into a 
more complex civilization, becomes the earliest 
record for the study of pre-historic Europe. Prim- 
itive man, the troglodyte, and the cliff dweller 
wherever found in the present age do not become 
a part of that age by reason of their presence in 
it, but remain an object of scientific observation 
and study to the anthopologist, the ethnologist, 
and their confrere the historian. The interest in 
primitive man is not intrinsic, but it depends for 
its vitality on the connection that is made between 
primitive man and modern man. A cross-cut sec- 
tion of the past as well as of the present shows 
human life in all stages of development, but only 
as these cross-cut sections are compared and uni- 
fied do we find that development called history. 

The attempt has been made to show how ex- 
tremely diflficult, nay how impossible, it is to divide 

22 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

the field of history by arbitrary chronological divi- 
sion and how misleading in their application to 
history are the designations ** ancient," ''medi- 
aeval," and ''modern." All is modern that sur- 
vives, all is ancient that has perished; age must 
always be a relative, not an absolute term. What- 
ever in literature or art or science contains ele- 
ments of the universal survives, while all that be- 
longs simply to the hour quickly loses its individu- 
ality and becomes a part of an undistinguishable 
whole. What survives survives because it has in 
itself the elements of the universal, because it is 
an outgrowth of previous conditions, because it has 
a continuity with all that has gone before, because 
it is natural and normal rather than artificial and 
eccentric. 

How then shall we meet the demand for the 
study of modern history to the exclusion of all 
other fields, how answ^er the plea that is made that 
the study of modern history is necessary in order 
that it may furnish "tens and hundreds of thou- 
sands of boys and girls, in the midst of the hustle 
and bustle of our restless environment" "what the 
memory of a live, alert mind of the twentieth cen- 
tury is likely to demand." 

May it be said in the first place that the demand 
for the study of modern history seems but the 
symptom of a condition of society that has lived in 
the present, whose interests have been those of the 
moment, — a pleasure-loving age devoted to the au- 
tomobile, the moving picture, a spring in Florida, a 
summer in the Rockies, an autumn in the Berk- 
shires and a winter in a New York apartment. 



23 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

It must also be said that much that masquerades 
to-day as modern history is but a miscellaneous 
collection of current events, or the descriptions of 
other lands by the facile pens of hurrying travel- 
lers. These are but cross-cut sections of life that 
is concerned with the present moment. History 
to be history must ever through an evolutionary 
process reconstruct the life of the past. The study 
of the past and of the present are not antagonistic, 
but are ever complementary. 

Again it must be noted that while it is easy to 
condemn as old-fashioned the study and writing of 
so-called ancient history, yet this is in truth the 
most modern history, while, as has been seen, it 
is old-fashioned to study modern history. It is in 
the field of so-called ancient history that the most 
important discoveries of new material are being 
made, — every turn of the archaeologist's spade 
brings to light new sources of information in re- 
gard to the life of former times. This new mate- 
rial makes possible for the historian new points of 
view, new comparisons, new interpretations. His- 
tory was once of one dimension, it now has three 
dimensions; it was long written in the flat, it is 
now written in the round ; it was once a narrative 
of the marshal deeds of great heroes, it is now a 
study and interpretation of past life. Many his- 
tories of the ancient world are, it is true, now abso- 
lutely worthless, but equally worthless are an equal 
numl3er of histories of America and of modern 
Europe. A History of the Great War was an- 
nounced soon after the opening of the war, and it is 
now coming from the press ; it is to be completed in 
five volumes, apparently without reference to the 

24 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

length of the war, and three volumes are already 
published. Many histories regardless of the period 
covered are alike without value because new con- 
ceptions of the meaning of history have come to 
historians, as these will in turn be supplanted by 
the conceptions of the future. The study of ancient 
history has lost none of its importance or interest, 
even though many histories of ancient times have 
been thrown to the discard where, it must be re- 
membered, they have been followed by many his- 
tories of modern times. It can not be repeated 
with too great emphasis that in weighing the merits 
of different fields of history as a subject of study 
the element of time in and of itself is the least im- 
portant. 

But while ancient history has changed with ref- 
erence to its content, the scene of the events of 
ancient history and of ancient life has remained 
stationary. The events of the Great War and its 
immediate predecessors have taken place where 
nearly two thousand years ago the great battles of 
the world were fought and the great campaigns 
carried on. Julius Caesar's Commentaries have 
formed the text-book on strategy for officers in the 
French army on the Aisne, and the world reverts 
again to his division of Gaul and its inhabitants 
and his characterization of the Belgians as the 
bravest of them all. In the Near East the old bat- 
tlefields of Greek and Trojan, Greek and Persian, 
Greek and Greek are still the scene of military cam- 
paigns; classical myths, classical poetry and 
drama, all live in perennial youth where time-old 
enemies are to-day once more engaged in mortal 
combat. In the Far "West of Europe, Bath is to- 

25 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

day used as a ''soldiers spa" as it was during the 
Roman occupation of Britain. At every turn we 
are reminded not only that ' ' the eternal human in 
Greek cannot die,"^ even 'though "it is only by 
slow degrees that the modern world has learned 
how much is left of ancient Athens, ' ' ^ but we are 
also learning, though slowly, that all nations share 
with Greece, though in varying degrees, in this ele- 
ment of the eternal. 

The very pursuit of the study of ancient history 
has led to the discovery of the slender basis of fact 
on which the traditional history of Rome rested, 
and to a reconsideration of all the laws of evidence 
on which history has been written. Much that is 
best in the present method of writing modern his- 
tory has been developed through a study of ancient 
history and the classical languages; their study 
could be discontinued only to the impairment of 
our knowledge of the present and to the loss of 
tools necessary to an understanding of it.^ 

A decision therefore in regard to the relative im- 
portance of the fields of ancient and of modern his- 
tory can only be reached, if reached at all, by real- 
izing that much that seems of importance at the 
moment proves ultimately to have been ephemeral, 

1 B. L. Gildersleeve, The Nation, ]\.\\y 8. 1915. 

2 Percy Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, p. 231. 

^A recent editorial deals with the subject "in lighter vein" and 
closes with the hopeful forecast : 

"Our professor of classic philology at Weissnichtwo, being 
only human, is not inaccessible to certain twinges of self-interest. 
He has read that the Balkan War is to have an effect on woman's 
fashions ; the Parisian dressmakers have decreed the revival of 
the military style in walking gowns. Our professor finds himself 
wondering whether the Balkan War will not have its effect on 
college fashions, whether a revival of interest in that classic 
world which is so real to him is not among the possibilities of 
the time."— The Evening Post (N. Y.), March 10, 1913. 

26 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

that much survives in the full vigor of youth that 
has been developed from apparently trivial begin- 
nings, that the significance of many events and 
conditions can not be gauged by the element of 
abstract time, and that continuity and survival are 
the chief factors in determining what is important. 
In a very true sense it may be said that ''there is 
no modern history because all modern history is 
something else. ' ' 

A scholium may perhaps be added. Analogies 
are always dangerous, but at the risk of making a 
false one it may be suggested that turbulent seas 
are weathered not by the light barks made from 
the saplings of a few years' growth, but by the 
hea^^" steamers into whose construction has gone 
material that has been preparing from the begin- 
ning of the world and that have required long- 
years of skilled workmanship for their perfect 
completion. Protection from cyclones is sought, 
not on the public streets, but in cellars dug deep 
into the earth. Warfare is carried on not with raw 
recruits but with men who have undergone long 
and arduous training. Even a partial understand- 
ing of what lies about us can come only through 
long and thorough acquaintance with history as it 
has been developed from a remote past. 

Much discussion has been given by students of 
history to the relative advantages of ancient and 
of modern history as fields of study, but there has 
apparently been unanimous assent given to the as- 
sumption that only the "important facts" of his- 
tory should be taught, even though this statement 
carries with it the germs of the fundamental ques- 
tion at issue. But a closer analysis of the situation 

27 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

shows that the appearance of unanimity is decep- 
tive. It must be self-evident that the facts of the 
past are as numerous as are the sands of the sea, 
that in and of themselves they have no stable or in- 
trinsic value, that their sole importance comes 
from their combination and re-combination with 
other facts, that a fact may have no value in com- 
bination with one group of facts and may have su- 
preme value in combination with a different group 
of facts, and that an endless succession of combina- 
tions and re-combinations of kaleidoscopic variety 
is not only possible but inevitable in all descrip- 
tions of the present. ''Every fact," says Steven- 
son, ''is a part of that great puzzle we must set to- 
gether; and none that comes directly in a writer's 
path but has some nice relations, unperceivable by 
him, to the totality and bearing of the subject un- 
der hand. '" The student and the writer of history 
accept the statement of the man of letters, — they 
know that all facts are chameleon-like in their na- 
ture, without worth at one time and in one relation, 
of great worth at other times and in other rela- 
tions. 

The fact that a person was born in one year or 
another is rarely of special importance and the 
variation of a few years apparently affects little, 
even his own personal history, but it is of great im- 
portance to ascertain definitely the fact when Co- 
lumbus was born since on the determination of the 
exact year depends the decision of the question as 
to how much knowledge it was possible for him to 



1 "The Morality of the Profession of Letters," Fortnightly Re- 
viezv, April, 1881, and in Essays of Travel and in the Art of 
Writing, p. 294. 

28 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

have of the voyages of previous discoverers. The 
determination of the exact year of the birth of Co- 
lumbus is important when taken in connection with 
other facts relating to the history of discovery, its 
relation to the revolt of the Spanish Netherlands 
is remote, and its inter-relation with the history of 
Tammany Hall, for example, entirely negligible. 
The facts concerned in the excommunication of 
Luther from the Church of Rome are of great im- 
portance when taken in connection with other facts 
connected with the history both of Protestantism 
and of Roman Catholicism ; they are indirectly of 
importance in the consideration of political ques- 
tions that later arose in England, they have no ap- 
parent weight in the history of church or State in 
Russia. 

It is impossible to deal only with the ''important 
facts ' ' of history since all facts may be at one time 
or another of great importance or of no import- 
ance. 

The prescription ''teach the facts" is also less 
simple than it seems. The great problem for the 
historian is not only to determine what are the 
facts but also to decide what is to be considered a 
fact. It is a fact that many have believed that the 
sole cause of the American Revolution was taxa- 
tion without representation, but it may also be a 
fact that it was not the sole cause ; it is a fact that 
many have believed in the divine right of kings to 
rule, but it is also a fact that many have questioned 
this ; it is possibly not a fact that kings do rule by 
divine right. The determination both of what the 
concrete facts have been and of what constitutes an 
abstract fact becomes a difficult problem. 

29 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

It seems therefore but a juggling with words to 
say that we must concern ourselves only with the 
facts of history. The great problem for the his- 
torian is to determine not only what the facts are 
but also what is a fact. 

Little has been said in regard to the method of 
dealing with the period selected, yet it can not go 
without question that this is immaterial. The 
terms ''modern history" and ''ancient history" 
may apply both to the material of history and to 
the method of dealing with it. Ancient history, in 
view of the discovery of new material and newer 
methods of dealing with it, presents far more that 
is novel than does any other period, as much that 
seems new and modern to-day will quickly go the 
way of last year's fashions in art and literature, 
food and clothing. Nothing is more true than a 
recent statement in a recent newspaper — that new- 
est of adaptations of the oldest of ideas — that 
' ' search for the obsolete yields more than novelty. 
Not the least of its results is a new comprehension 
of the modern. ' ' ^ The long sweep of time included 
in the field denominated ancient history adapts it 
to one nature of treatment, the very restricted 
term called modern history demands an entirely 
different treatment. Both may be examined with 
the minute care of the paleographer and the epi- 
graphist, if the worker in the field is mature and is 
master of his tools. But the immature student 
needs the long sweep, the vision of the whole hori- 
zon, — this is for the novice and the beginner as 
well as for the master, but the cross-cut section for 
the master workman alone. 

1 "Novelty and the New," The Evening Post (N. Y.), Janu- 
ary 21, 1910. 

30 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 



It is therefore not so much the period covered 
or the subjects considered that give an historical 
work intrinsic importance ; its value rather rests 
on the method with which the records are collected, 
verified, tested, collated, and interpreted. 

Does the question then of modern history in all 
its ramifications not resolve itself into a statement 
of Stevenson 's, ' ' History is much decried ; it is a 
tissue of errors, we are told no doubt correctly; 
and rival historians expose each other's blunders 
with gratification. Yet the worst historian has a 
clearer view of the period he studies than the best 
of us can hope to form of that in w^hich we live. 
The obscurest epoch is to-day; and that for a 
thousand reasons of inchoate tendency, conflicting 
report, and sheer mass and multiplicity of experi- 
ence ; but chiefly, perhaps, by reason of an insid- 
ious shifting of landmarks. Parties and ideas con- 
tinually move, but not by measurable marches on 
a stable course ; the political soil itself steals forth 
by imperceptible degrees, like a traveling glacier, 
carrying on its bosom not only political parties but 
their flag-posts and cantonments ; so that what ap- 
pears to be an eternal city founded on hills is but 
a flying island of Laputa. ' ' ^ 

The truth of these observations of Stevenson's 
is confirmed by the experience of each one of us. 
The presidential election campaigns are few in 
which even the most intelligent persons understand 
what is going on about them, — they prefer to 
prophesy after rather than before the election re- 
turns are counted. Probably at no time in the 

1 R. L. Stevenson, "The Day After To-Morrovv," in Essays of 
Travel and in the Art of Writing, p. 302. 

31 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

world has so much material been available for the 
study of a contemporaneous period as is available 
for the study of the present war, at no time have 
so many intelligent minds been actively at work to 
determine its causes and to understand its politi- 
cal, military, economic, industrial and social bear- 
ings, never before, in spite of the most rigorous 
censorship ever known in countries where freedom 
of the press has hitherto prevailed, has it been so 
possible to gauge public opinion in regard to war, 
yet who of us will dare say whither we are drifting? 

This discussion of what is modern history has, 
it is hoped, made it clear that many fallacies are 
connected with the question. One is that there is 
a fixed chronology that has an ever increasing 
value as it approaches the present day. Another 
is the assumption that there is a consensus of opin- 
ion as to what is meant by modern history, and 
still another that facts have in and of themselves 
a definite fixed value. 

The practical application of the discussion of 
the subject must be that it at least does not go 
without saying that all are hopeless reactionaries 
who question the wisdom of substituting modern 
history for ancient history in the school and col- 
lege curriculum. Nothing is so simple as to con- 
demn by ridicule. It is easy to heap jeers on the 
teacher who slavishly follows the text in studying 
the Peloponnesian wars and requires from a class 
the correct dates of the Samnite wars, but it is a 
non-sequitur that the same teacher would find the 
Great War any more inspiring or teach it any more 
successfully. If an acquaintance with the history 
of Rome is suggested, the objection is triumphant- 

32 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

ly advanced, ''But what is the use of knowing 
about the Samnite wars ! ' ' There is indeed little 
use that can be discovered to-day in studying the 
Samnite wars, but to consider these controversies 
synonymous with the history of Rome is parallel 
mth considering the border warfare carried on in 
America from the settlement of Jamestown to the 
recent troubles with Mexico as comprehending the 
history of this country ; the study of border war- 
fare is as valid an objection in one case as in the 
other to the study of the country as a whole. It 
is easy to set up standards of perfection and to 
condemn all who do not attain unto them. Noth- 
ing is so easy as to find the bottomless pits of ig- 
norance into which college freshmen, college sen- 
iors, college professors fall when facts of modern 
history and modern geography are presented to 
them. Ancient history is indeed forgotten, but no 
more quickly forgotten than is modern history, — 
both alike vanish into thin air if they are not ac- 
tively in use. 

How does the question of what is modern his- 
tory concern itself with the new internationalism? 
The question can be answered only by asking 
other questions. 

How can we deal with the problem of the for- 
eigner in our midst unless we know the history of 
the lands from which he has come? 

How can we understand the great questions of 
emigration and immigration unless we know that 
man has always been a migratory animal, that he 
has always "moved on" in search of real or fan- 
cied improvement in his condition, that wanderlust 
in default of other reasons explains his restless 

33 



WHAT IS MODERN HISTORY? 

movements. How can we deal with the melting 
pot in America unless we know that races have 
always mingled and intermingled through con- 
quest, through intermarriage, through commerce, 
through exchange of industrial workers, through 
financial operations, through every reason known 
to the human mind, and that from the beginning 
of time purity of the human race has never existed? 

How can we prepare for a new internationalism 
unless we have learned how much the nations have 
had in common from the childhood of the races 
until the present? 

How can we understand the national antipathies 
of the present unless we know that as far back as 
we can trace human history the Rhine Valley has 
been the bone of contention between the tribes and 
nations whose farther progress has been halted by 
the great river, unless we realize that warring 
races have ever made a cockpit of Southeastern 
Europe? 

Much of the hatred that has come to the surface 
in the present war has in reality been deep-seated 
and of long duration; it has been engendered in 
every nation, in varying degrees, by systems of 
education that have used the study of history to 
inculcate a false, narrow and pernicious patriot- 
ism. Is it open to America by a deeper, more thor- 
ough study of the long past to get the point of view 
of other nations and thus to lead in a new interna- 
tionalism based on the knowledge that in the last 
analysis the human race is one in its hopes, aspira- 
tions, and ideals ? 



34 



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